IS PORTUGAL THE NEW ENERGY FUTURE?

Portugal is proving a nation can depend on New Energy for a big part of its power and be better off for doing so.

Manuel Pinho, Portugal’s economy minister and the driving force behind its thriving New Energy economy: “In the same way as Finland is famous for mobile phones, France for its high-speed trains and Germany for its industry, Portugal will become known for renewable energy…All of a sudden, a lot of people are looking to Portugal as an example.”

Europe’s biggest onshore wind installation came online in Portugal’s Alto Minho hills this year and the world’s biggest solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant is in Amareleja, near ther Spanish border. The world’s first commercial-scale wave energy project went online off Portugal’s Atlantic coast last fall and it is building a national electric vehicle charging network.

This begs an important question of bigger nations around the developed economic world: If Portugal can do it, why can't the economies that invented and advanced these technologies?

Under Pinho’s New Energy Policy for Portugal, approved 6 months after the current leftist government came to power in 2005, Portugal now gets 20.5% of its power from New Energy.

Economy Minister Pinho: “This is not wishful thinking…the projects are in the pipeline.”

The plan calls for Portugal to produce 60+% of its electricity and 31% of its total energy – including electricity, heating and transportion fuel – from New Energy sources by 2020. By comparison, the overall EU goal is to get to 20% by 2020 and President Obama will have trouble convincing the U.S. Congress to get on track for 12% by 2020.

Economy Minister Pinho: “I was conscious that a small country like Portugal couldn’t be good at everything…But I knew we needed to be very good at something. If we didn’t move our technology rapidly forward, we would fall behind. Leadership of capital- or skill-intensive industries such as semiconductors or software design is beyond our capacity. By a process of intuition, renewable energy emerged as an ideal sector in which Portugal could become a world leader and establish a role for itself at the technological frontier. This seems evident today, but four years ago it was far from obvious.”

This begs another important question of Fossil Fools, Naysayers and Old Energy mavens in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world: What happened to all the problems, the inadequate, too-expensive technologies and grid intergration issues they claim holds New Energy back? They don't seem to be holding New Energy back in Portugal.

Portugal’s success proves “necessity is the mother of invention.” The nation has no fossil fuels in the ground. In 2008, Portugal gave up 5% of its GDP importing energy. Though oil prices have fallen, so has GDP, so the loss will again be significant this year, but Pinho says “no we can’t” to ongoing dependence of that kind.

Pinho: “To do this a country needs to achieve a minimum scale of production, enforce competition and create the right incentives to bring in private investment.”

By the middle of the coming decade, Pinho expects New Energy to save Portugal more than half a billion dollars in energy costs. It will also cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to save Portugal €100 million in the EU’s emissions trading market.

Portugal has great sun. (click to enlarge)

When Pinho mentions “the right incentives” he is referring to Portugal’s Feed-in Tariff (FiT). Unlike the U.S. tax credits that return a portion of a New Energy project’s cost via reductions on the taxes earned from selling electricity the system generates, an FiT guarantees those who build New Energy projects a rate of return above retail rates for all the power they generate for an extended period of time, usually 15-to-20 years.

Feed-in Tariffs in Portugal. (click to enlarge)

Meant to drive the volume of New Energy, an effective FiT also includes a degression rate which lowers the guaranteed rate of return as economies of scale grow. This prods developers to move sooner.

As a result of its FiT, Portugal’s installed wind energy generating capacity grew from 537 megawatts to 2,740 megawatts from 2003 to 2008. It is expected to be 8,500 megawatts by 2020 and account for 30% of Portugal’s electricity, twice its share in 2007. Because of this growth, the FiT price for wind-generated electricity is €0.07 per kilowatt-hour, just about the same as fossil fuel-generated electricity. And when, in the foreseeable future, emissions cost more, wind will be the best deal in power generation.

The government's expenditure comes back in the form of economic expansion.

The PV solar power plant in Amareleja generates 93 million kilowatt-hours/year in domestically produced, greenhouse gas emissions-free power, keeping the money that would have spent to important natural gas or coal in the country and elimnating the cost of all those emissions. In addition, Acciona, the solar plant’s developer, has spent €3 million in Portugal for R&D, worker training and New Energy infrastructure deveplopment, like the solar panel assembly plant it built for Portugal that now provides 100 jobs. As part of its deal for the opportunity to build the installation, Acciona is also spending €500,000/year in the local community.

From france24english via YouTube.

Francisco Aleixo, spokesman, Acciona: “An investment like this makes a big difference in a district with about 1,000 people out of work in a population of 16,000…The new skills and technology that come with the plant are also vitally important in an area with no industrial tradition.”

Near the Alto Minho wind installation, dockworlers in the port of Viana do Castelo are busy shipping out of blades, towers and turbine components from 4 Enercon inudstrial units that supply 40% of Portugal’s wind industry and export the rest of their annual production of 200 towers and generators and 600 rotor blades. The units employ 1000 Portugese, 400 of whom are female, many retrained from the country’s faltering textile industry.

In 4 years, New Energy has created 10,000 jobs in Portugal. 22,000 more will come by 2020 as a result of the €14 billion anticipated from the New Energy policy’s incentives and complimentary development.

Pinho: “Industrial policy has a bad reputation in Anglo-Saxon countries, but it can be used for good purposes…We are already demonstrating the success of the ideas promoted by President Obama, the concept of using clean energy to combat climate change, reduce external energy dependency and deliver an important stimulus to the economy.”

Portugal’s most cutting-edge technology is wave energy. Its Pelamis Wave Power project, the world’s first commercial-scale wave energy installation, is reportedly 2-to-3 years ahead of all other competitors.

All has not yet gone swimmingly for the 3 snake-like Pelamis devices with a combined 2.25 megawatt capacity. They were recently towed ashore for corrections.

Rui Barros, board member, Pelamis: “Producing electricity from the sea is the exact opposite of inventing something like the sewing machine…Rather than a stroke of individual genius, success depends on painstakingly resolving hundreds of small problems until you achieve commercially viable production. It’s a marathon rather than a sprint.”

Portugal has some of Europe's most accessible wave enrgy. (click to enlarge)

Portugal, having made a modest beginning, intends to have 250 megawatts of wave energy capacity by 2020. The U.S., by contrast, has not yet approved rules and regulations for wave energy. The UK is performing tests.

Barros, Pelamis: “What North Sea oil and gas did for Scottish industry, wave energy can do for Portugal…”

Beyond the cutting edge in energy generation is a huge and exciting advancement in energy storage. Portugal is building dams behind which it will collect water pumped up hill by excess solar and wind power for release as hydrodynamic power when the sun and wind aren’t available.

António Mexia, chief executive, Energias de Portugal: “The biggest problem facing energy producers is storage…The dams become batteries which can be managed to produce power on demand regardless of wind conditions.”

Portugal is spending €3.5 billion for 10 new dams and increasing the capacity of 6 existing dams, one of the world’s biggest dam-building programs.

A tiny nation at the tip of the Iberian Peninsula is doing what the rest of the economically advanced world has not yet to find the courage to do. Portugal is throwing its arms open to the inevitability of the New Energy future while - as ice caps melt, coasts erode, the less endowed run for the hills and the angry use the wealth of Old Energy to gird themselves in cruel and self-immolating rage - recalcitrants bury their heads in the sands of self-interest and greed.

From ChiefAlegre via YouTube

Portugal’s mission to harness energy
Peter Wise, February 27, 2009 (Financial Times)

WHO
José Miguel Oliveira, project manager, Ventominho; Manuel Pinho, economy minister, Portugal; Acciona; Enercon; Pelamis Wave Power; Energias de Portugal

WHAT
Portugal’s waves, water, sun and wind, once seen only as attractions for tourists, are becoming Portugal’s power.

WHEN
- 2001: Portugal began pushing solar.
- The New Energy Policy, Pinho’s clean energy plan for Portugal, was approved 6 months after the new government came to power in 2005. It calls for Portugal to get 31% of its energy, including transport, from New Energy sources by 2020.
- Portugal presently gets 20.5% of its power from New Energy.
- After 2 years of construction, the 120-turbine Alto Minho project went online in January 2009.
- 2006: Acciona granted 15-year licence for the Amareleja solar power plant.
- 2007: Acciona began construction.
- 2008: Solar power plant went online.
- 2008: Enercon
- By 2015: Portugal’s New Energy will save it €440m ($559m).

Portugal has good onshore wind resources. (click to enlarge)

WHERE
- Alto Minho, Portugal, is the site of the biggest on-shore wind installation in Europe.
- Amareleja, Portugal, is 150 km south-east of Lisbon, near the Spanish border.
- Leixões is the port in Portugal’s northern capital city of Porto.
- Acciona is based in Spain.
- Enercon is based in Germany.
- Pelamis Wave Power is based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
- The Pelamis wave energy project is off Aguçadoura, an Atlantic coast beach ~40km north of Porto.

Portugal has good offshore wind resources. (click to enlarge)

WHY
- Portugal’s geographical bounty is a climate and geology that provides abundant New Energy resources: (1) Westerly winds on a broad sweep of hill ranges in the north and central regions ideal for wind installations, (2) ~300 sunny days a year in the South, perfect for solar power plants, (3) a long Atlantic coastline, calmer than that of northern Europe and so suitable for wave energy projects, and (4) rivers from Spain that generate more hydrodynamic power.
- Oliviera manages Ventominho’s 120 wind turbines over 5 serras in Alto Minho.
- Erecting the 120 Alto Minho 65-meter and 78-meter turbines w/40m rotor blades, linking them with a 54-kV power line and building substations took 600 workers.
- Alto Minho produces ~530 gigawatt-hours electricity/year, 53% of the power consumed by the region’s 250, 000 population.
- Land rent on wind projects has doubled local parish council budgets, leading to church restorations, recreational facility building and new water and sanitation systems.
- Amareleja is the hottest place in Portugal and gets 7 hours of sun a day.
- The €261 million Amareleja PV installation has 2,520 single axis tracking solar panels, each with 104 polycrystalline silicon modules and produces ~93 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year.
- The Pelamis project consists of 3 train car-sized, linked steel tubes that generate energy when waves cause the hinged joints of the semi-submerged cylinders to move, pumping oil at high pressure through hydraulic motors.
- The main challenge: Devices that can is to build converters that can withstand the aggressive and constant impact of ocean waves.
- Portugal can eventually generate 20% of its power, 5000 megawatts, from wave energy, using 250 of the country’s 600 km of coastline.
- Portugal will use its under-construction dams to increase its hydro capacity from ~5,000 megawatts to 8,600+ megawatts by 2020.
- Energias de Portugal was a state energy monopoly and is now the country’s largest listed company.

From pt1978 via YouTube.

QUOTES
Financial Times: "Emily Brontë would have felt at home in the Alto Minho. The wuthering heights of Portugal’s northernmost region are as wild and exhilarating as the Yorkshire moors, a landscape of “intractable mountains, dark woods, deep valleys and dangerous ravines”, according to a monk who reached the area in the 17th century. The weather rarely strays from what Brontë called “atmospheric tumult” and the people, like her tempestuous characters, see themselves as fearless, headstrong and rebellious."
- Oliveira: “It’s a place that always makes a strong impression on people...It was a logistical challenge...We had to negotiate individually with every landowner when a road needed widening or a corner modifying.”
- Barros, Pelamis: “The need to stop burning carbon fuels and to power electric vehicles will become intense. I’m convinced wave energy will gather momentum very quickly towards large-scale production.”
Manuel Pinho, economy minister: “For Portugal not to use its enormous potential for hydro, wind and other clean energies would be like Venezuela not using its oil.”